UV STERILIZATION for algae

hey Kedron

lets re visit some of the earlier points and see if we cant trace the issue

Lighting was mentioned - and you seem OK with relatively new lamps
Nitrates and phosphates have been mentioned - do you test for these ? if so what are the levels

additional - filtration -is the pro clear with skimmer the only filter you have on this 55g?
how much rock do you have?
and is the K2 the only other source of water movement?

Im suspecting high nitrates are the issue here and maybe PO4
if for example you had insufficient rock and very little water flow, then nutrients build up as there is not enough bacteria "real estate" to process these wastes and they feed your GHA

 

What's up man? I had the same problem you are having a last month. I did regular water changes with (RO/DI is all Ive ever used) , fed less, good skimming, etc. and nothing helped. My LFS said that if I have tried doing everything else I could use this stuff called Red Slime Remover. All you do is mix this powder up in water and put it in a high flow area in your tank and it will wipe the red algae out quickly. Just be sure to lower the level of your skimmer after putting it in b/c it will overflow. Good luck, hope this helps.

 

i just checked my tank and my nitrates are 20ppm but everything else is where it should be i need a fast way to lower these

 

and i have picks of my tank so you can see how it is setup and the stuff i was talking bout i think is called chaeto

 

Hi Kedron , next water change, blast your rock work and get rid of any sediment you find

there are chemical methods, resins that you can add to your filter system that will reduce your nitrates

Steve

 

i try and do that everytime i do water change and i have taken all sponges out of filter so now it only skimming i am going to start taking those damn blue balls out filter next and ad live and some base rock intead of those balls will this work better for filtration in my wet dry

 

He has a hair algae problem, not a red slime problem.

You can add chaeto to the sump but it probably won't help much. It will remove nutrients that the hair algae feed on. It won't help very much very quickly since the hair algae is already established. It will help in the long run though.

If you are going to remove the hair algae by hand you are going to want to have a UV sterilizer. The UV won't remove the algae on its on, but if you are removing it by hand the spores that are released in the removal process will hopefully flow through the UV and die.

 

I too have an algea problem that has run amuck

Greetings all. I have been searching all over the web trying to fix my algea problem. First the demographics:

85 gallon tank with a 55 gallon wet dry. Overflow box goes into wet dry which spreads water on tray which drips it thru blue balls. have a sealife skimmer in sump. Water leaves skimmer goes through a sock filter (not literally a sock) then is returned back to tank with a 1200gpm pump. I also have 2 maxijet 1200 powerhead moving water around. In tank i have 5 black and white damsels, a clown fish with bubble tip anemone, a small blue and yellow fish, 3 shrimp, and just added 4 green crabs and 6 small hermit crabs (very small, and a starfish, forgot what kind but is about 5 inches in diameter and does nothing but sit below the sand. I have live sand and about 75 pounds of live rock.

And I have red algea that simply will not go away.

nitrates - 0
phosphates - .10
salinity - 1.02

Even had the tank moved from my office to my house by professional fish movers so I could try and fix this problem. It looked like they had cleaned almost all of it up, and it was all back in about 4 days.

 

The last sentence illustrates the classic algae problem. Without addressing the cause, the symptoms are destined to continue.

Take a look at this. You don't have to do everything, but do what you can.

 

Emerald crabs won't touch GHA. The reason why you are reading 20ppm on your NO3, is because the GHA is eating it up and giving you a false reading. If you removed all your GHA, your NO3 levels will jump up to the 60ppm+ range and will just regrow. How/what are you feeding your livestock? How long are you leaving your lights on? I read you are using RO/DI water, but if you have a TDS meter, check it to make sure you are less than 10ppm on the TDS meter. Do you have a fuge set up in your system?